Hi all! I'm learning to program python through codeacademy.com, which turns out to be a great resource for learning all sorts of language. I'm hoping to be able to write at least basic programs in it and ruby come August or September. Do any of you know places I can practice either in supplement to codeacademy? I know there's the python challenge, but I don't imagine I'm ready for that yet. Thank you all!

Like dcat said in IRC, you'll learn the most by finding things written in Python in Ruby (either on github or elsewhere) and "dissecting" it. This is the primary way I have learned to program, and it's partly because of my interest in ricing. Being able to look through source code and completely understand everything that is going on is a skill that you can develop over time and will definitely make you a better programmer. Customize code to fit your needs, play with it, break it, understand how you broke it, etc. It will all help. Good luck!

Thank you! I'll certainly start looking at things.

I really find a well written book to be very useful in learning a new language. For Python in particular, Learn Python the Hard Way is a great choice, and the HTML version is free. It's very nicely written and really forces you to learn it well.

Down the line it ends up recommending what jmbi did as well, so that's another great suggestion.

I learned Python through immersion. I made a little IRC bot and I learned a ton about just strings alone.

vypr, care to elaborate?

Read books and or take a computer science course.

(20-06-2014, 03:12 AM)yrmt Wrote: Read books and or take a computer science course.

In other words, read books. None of my intro CS classes did anything for me.

(19-06-2014, 08:30 PM)dcli Wrote: vypr, care to elaborate?

I think he just means pick a cool project and see it through, you'll learn stuff along the way. Ultimately there's only so much you can learn without trying it out for yourself, you've got to make something.

I know for a fact that vypr learned much about string sanitisation in Python after me and dcat started being ourselves.

I know that google has a Python class that's available with examples and worked through examples for their excercises, all available for free. The videos are available on youtube. Admittedly it's made for C/Java migrants (I already had some FORTRAN90 and C experience at the time) but if you're determined and take it slow you should have no problems.